After an offseason of speculation, WNBA star Diana Taurasi has officially announced her retirement — hanging up her shoes after 20 seasons as one of the unequivocal faces of women’s basketball.
Diana Taurasi’s retirement announcement comes at a perfect time
Taurasi, who headlined the Phoenix Mercury for 20 years, leaves women’s basketball in a better place than ever.
Photo by Kate Frese/NBAE via Getty Images
Noa Dalzell is a senior writer covering the WNBA and all of women’s basketball for Breakaway, SB Nation’s women’s sports vertical, as well as the Celtics for CelticsBlog.
She revealed her decision, which was widely expected to come at some point this offseason, in an interview with the TIME’s Sean Gregory.
“Mentally and physically, I’m just full,” she said. “That’s probably the best way I can describe it. I’m full and I’m happy.”
Diana Taurasi is one of the WNBA’s all-time greats — if not its best-ever
Taurasi is often referred to as the GOAT (the greatest of all time), and the accolades back it up: three WNBA championships, three NCAA titles, six EuroLeague titles, two-time WNBA Finals MVP, three-time EuroLeague MVP, the list goes on and on and on.
She leaves the WNBA as its all-time leading scorer (with a more-than-3,000-point lead over Tina Charles for second place). She’s made more three-point shots than any player in league history and has more Olympic gold medals (6) than any basketball player, male or female.
It’s a resume that, at the moment, no other women’s basketball player rivals.
“Daina Taurasi is one of the greatest competitors to ever play the game of basketball on any stage,” WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement.
Taurasi told Gregory she recognizes her slew of records will eventually be broken.
“My scoring record, or the six gold medals, someone’s going to come around that has the same hunger, the same addiction to basketball, and put those records in a different way, a different name,” she said. “That’s what sports is all about. That’s going to be fun to watch. Hopefully not soon.”
Why Taurasi’s retirement comes at a perfect time
When the Mercury point guard was drafted in 2004, women’s basketball was in a completely different place. The WNBA was in its infancy, its future undetermined. And, throughout her 20-year playing career, the popularity and success of the league ebbed and flowed.
She leaves the sport at the height of its popularity, with a new generation of young stars like Caitlin Clark bringing unprecedented levels of viewership and engagement to women’s basketball. The league is in the midst of a massive expansion, set to add teams in Golden State (2025), Toronto (2026), and Portland (2026) in the upcoming seasons while more than a dozen cities submit bids for teams to come to them.
A rookie class headlined by stars like Clark, Angel Reese, and Cameron Brink has contributed to the unprecedented viewership and engagement. And, in the coming years, a new generation of college standouts like UConn senior Paige Bueckers, USC sophomore JuJu Watkins, and Notre Dame sophomore Hannah Hidalgo will only build upon the league’s current momentum.
In some ways, it’s bittersweet that Taurasi only got to experience one year of charter flights, and had to play in front of less-than-full arenas for a significant portion of her career. She had to go overseas every offseason to supplement the WNBA’s limited salaries, going so far as to sit out the 2015 WNBA season in order to collect her $1.5 million paycheck from her Russian professional basketball team, which made her the highest women’s basketball player in the world at the time. That same season was the WNBA’s worst-ever.
As viewership rises, the WNBA’s financial model will soon change too; players are set to negotiate a new CBA, and salaries are expected to substantially rise.
Taurasi told Gregory she wasn’t sure about her next steps post-retirement.
“That’s the question that I still don’t have an answer for,” says Taurasi. “I really enjoy taking my kids to school, being home when they’re home, not leaving for a week at a time.”
Maybe a career in media is in the cards, or in coaching. Given her charismatic personality and uber-competitive nature, both seem like feasible possibilities.
Or, maybe she’ll step away from the game altogether, as many retired athletes choose to do.
But the reality is that no matter how she elects to intersect with women’s basketball moving forward, Taurasi can sleep at night knowing that the game she loves so much is in a better place than ever.
And, that no women’s basketball player’s accomplishments rivals hers — at least for now.
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